INTERNATIONAL: Diminuendo-l

New Year’s Day, 1941, when the blitz against London was in full swing, Adolf Hitler predicted: “The year will bring the completion of the greatest victory in our history.” A year later, while the U.S. was still reeling from the shock of Pearl Harbor, the Führer said: “1942 will bring the decision for the salvation of our nation. . . .” Last year he cried: “The day will come when one of the contending parties in this struggle will. collapse. It will not be Germany.” As 1944 opened he said: “In this war there will be no victors and no losers, merely survivors and annihilated.”

From Ankara came a footnote. London Daily Express Correspondent Cedric Salter quoted an unnamed Rumanian who saw Hitler four weeks ago: “I would not say that the war has changed Hitler much outwardly, but of late it has developed one side of his character abnormally. Before the war he was half mystic, half brutal opportunist. The opportunist has faded and with his growing personal solitariness he has become more & more otherworldly. He sleeps badly . . . rarely rises before 10:30 or 11… insists upon being alone for at least an hour each day. . . . His habits are even simpler than they were three years ago. When he is at his headquarters behind the Eastern Front, he has the same food and drink as the men. At Berchtesgaden he has occasional parties for men guests only, gives them French wine, for which he has developed a strong liking. . . . One of his aides told me that violent rages were often followed by fits of weeping and talk of ‘needless bloodshed’ which were hushed up by his entourage. Hitler has not been in Berlin since the R.A.F. began their latest big bombings.”